Mix up Your Fitness Routine With High Intensity Interval Training

If you haven’t already heard of interval training, it’s time that you learned about it. It doesn’t matter if you’re just starting to work out seriously for the first time, getting back into a fitness routine after a long absence, or if you’re a seasoned fitness buff, high intensity interval training can work for you. The best news is that it doesn’t take very much time in order to see benefits from this kind of training. That means that no matter how busy your schedule happens to be, this is the kind of workout that you have time for. You can actually replace an hour on the treadmill with fifteen minutes of high intensity interval training and see the same or greater benefits.

The trick is to alternate short bursts of very intense activity with slightly longer periods of less strenuous activity. A good starter high intensity interval training routine is running and walking. Break your fifteen minutes up into five three-minute intervals. For the first minute, run as fast as you can. For the next two minutes, slow down to a jog, or even a walk. Do that five times, and you’ve completed fifteen minutes of high intensity interval training, and saved yourself an hour on the treadmill. At the gym, you can move from one machine or exercise to the next quickly, taking short breaks in between. For instance, move from Kettlebell squats to pull-ups to box jumps to jack knives, doing each exercise for 45 seconds apiece and resting for 15 seconds in between. Then jump rope for three minutes and rest for one. After that, you can move on to a different set of exercises. Four or five rounds like this, using various machines and equipment, will work out every muscle in your body in far less time than you would usually spend at the gym.